The diffusion of gender quotas reflects the legitimation of the normative principle of women's equality in public life. Legislative gender quotas, whether adopted through top-down elite decision making or through bottom-up feminist activism, are frequently justified via appeals to norms of inclusion and fairness. These democratic ideals of women's full representation and participation have indeed gained traction: Over the past two decades, quotas have extended beyond legislatures to public institutions, such as cabinets and executive agencies, and to state advisory councils, subnational governments, labor union directorates, and corporate boards. Such diffusion signals a profound gendering of public space and leadership, a transformation initiated by states assuming active roles as the guarantors—rather than mere promoters—of equality.
We argue that the growing popularity of quotas signals an emerging, though implicit, consensus that state power can be used to engineer equality and empower women not just in politics, but also in society and the economic arena. This consensus implies a significant change in states’ willingness to use coercive measures to ensure women's access to arenas of political and social power. Comparative research is needed to determine whether factors like regime change or certain models of capitalism make quota diffusion to different arenas, and especially to the corporate sector, more likely. Comparative research will also be needed to determine the broader consequences of such an expanded state role in securing gender equality and whether such trends have an impact on equality demands from other marginalized groups.
THE DIFFUSION OF QUOTAS
Quota diffusion occurs through both “broadening” and “deepening.” By broadening, we mean the application of quotas beyond elected offices. First, quotas have diffused to other government branches and levels. Colombia, for instance, applies a 30% gender quota to positions in the “top hierarchy” of the executive branch at national and subnational levels of government. Niger applies a 25% quota to all positions within the public administration, from cabinet posts to high school principals. And Ecuador and Bolivia have stipulated the equal representation of men and women in judgeships for all courts at all levels. From Haiti to Belgium, countries are adopting or considering quotas for the executive branch, public administration, and the judiciary. Second, quotas have diffused to other public arenas. In 2002, Argentina adopted a 30% quota for the directorates of labor unions. Norway, Iceland, and Finland adopted—as early as the 1970s and 1980s—quotas for women's placement on public bodies, best described as state advisory councils. Further afield, quotas for civic agencies have been adopted by several Indian municipalities and states.
More notably, states are demonstrating their willingness to compel the private sector to include women, as the norm of gender inclusiveness moves beyond politics and into business. Sixteen countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and South Africa) and several regions (Quebec, Berlin, and Nuremberg) have passed laws mandating quotas for corporate boards of publicly traded and/or state-owned companies. Similar bills are pending elsewhere, and many European countries have included quotas as voluntary mechanisms within their corporate governance codes. Even countries without corporate quotas have felt pressure to democratize economic leadership, with prime ministers in New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom committing to board diversity and exhorting private sector compliance.
Overall, a wide variety of private enterprises and public entities have adopted gender quotas. The measures have even appeared in international bodies: Quotas have been implemented for judgeships on the International Criminal Court in Rome, imposed by the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, and proposed for the diplomatic service of the European Union. We argue that quota diffusion indicates states’ willingness to enforce norms of gender inclusiveness and gender equality. In doing so, states are interceding in arenas previously assumed to be beyond such intervention: While quotas for legislative bodies were intended to achieve women's political empowerment, quotas for judiciaries, nonelected bodies, and business enterprises are intended to bring about gender justice and enhance women's social and economic empowerment.
The connection between quotas’ normative principles and their democratization of power also appears in the deepening of quotas inside and outside the legislature. By “deepening,” we mean the process wherein quotas’ initial percentage has risen, as percentages below parity now seem insufficient for achieving women's full inclusion. Throughout Latin America, for instance, reforms have raised legislative quotas’ threshold percentage from 20–30% to 40 or even 50%, and presidents now promise “parity cabinets” that will equally distribute ministerial portfolios between women and men. Corporate quotas have likewise deepened: In Norway, reforms have applied the mechanism to an ever-widening category of companies, and in Austria, France, and Italy, the corporate quota threshold increases in set intervals (20% or 25% in the first few years to 35% or 40% in subsequent years).
This deepening acknowledges that the gendering of public space and leadership must transcend tokenism, move beyond “critical mass,” and constitute true equality or parité. As such, when states deepen quota provisions, they move beyond symbolic or rhetorical acceptance of women's equality to engage in a more radical redistribution of power. What is more, quota deepening is often accompanied by increased penalties for noncompliance, regulations that clarify procedures for nominating and/or short-listing women, and judicial decisions that affirm quotas’ constitutionality.
Such moves indicate that state leaders take seriously both women's integration into public life and the claim that their integration transforms politics. The slogan used by quota campaigns in Argentina and Chile—“When a few women enter politics, women change, but when many women enter politics, politics changes”—signifies this ideal. Likewise, as noted in Spain, firm performance improved not with the presence of one female director, but with the presence of many female directors (Campbell and Mínguez-Vera Reference Campbell and Mínguez-Vera2008).
Overall, the broadening and deepening trends in quota diffusion are remarkable and unmistakable, signaling new directions for comparative scholarship on norm diffusion, institutional innovation, and the role of the state in securing equality for historically marginalized groups. Researchers have yet to document and categorize fully the myriad new arenas, forms, and flavors in which quotas appear, but these trends pose key questions for comparative politics scholars about the precise diffusion mechanism, the factors explaining why states adopt one type of quota and not others, and the broader impact of an expanded state role in guaranteeing the equal presence of women in arenas of power.
TRANSFORMING THE STATE AND EMPOWERING WOMEN
Taken together, the broadening and deepening of quotas demonstrates acceptance of the norm that public spaces must include women and the growing recognition that democracy depends on women's equal presence. This process signals a new order in which the state is not merely enforcing antidiscrimination laws and encouraging women's opportunities. Rather, by obliging recalcitrant public and private actors to include women, the state is forcibly reforming institutions, gendering leadership, and redistributing not just political power, but also social and economic power. This imposition of equality via fiat will reshape governance in ways consequential for women's well-being and for the daily practice of politics, business, and civil society.
The shift from promoting to guaranteeing equality lies in the slow pace of cultural change. Gender equality advocates once believed that, as sex gaps in education and employment narrowed, more women would enter the male-dominated elite circles in politics and business. Yet in many places, women remained clogged in the pipeline: Their presence in post-secondary institutions and the labor force expanded dramatically while their access to politics and boardrooms stagnated. This sluggish pace thus shaped arguments for quotas.
From Mexico to Slovenia, quota advocates have underscored the glacial increases (or even setbacks) in women's presence without mandatory equality mechanisms (Antić Gaber Reference Antíc Gaber, Dahlerup and Freidenvall2008; Baldez Reference Baldez2004). Likewise, the former Norwegian Minister of Equality justified her country's corporate quota by stating, “I do not want to wait another 20 or 30 years for men with enough intelligence to finally appoint women” (Casey, Skibnes, and Pringle Reference Casey, Skibnes and Pringle2011, 618). While quotas have, in this sense, been characterized as the “fast track” to equal representation (Dahlerup and Freidenvall Reference Dahlerup and Freidenvall2005), the use of state power to attain this goal has remained undertheorized by comparative politics scholars.
By imposing quotas, the state corrects for equality guarantees that were either (1) implemented voluntarily and unsuccessfully by public or private institutions or (2) never delivered in the first place. Viviane Reding, Gender Commissioner for the European Union, noted in March 2012 that she had been assured by CEOs that “they were capable of solving the problem [of women's exclusion] by themselves.” Yet Reding expressed frustration, noting equal representation on corporate boards would take 40 years at current rates; consequently, “politicians are ready to take action.” Likewise, David Cameron—the conservative British Prime Minister—remarked that strong measures “will not be taboo” if women's representation in public institutions did not improve.Footnote 1 Both leaders appear willing to use state power to ensure women's access to social and economic power.
Quotas are thus justified in terms of their empirical consequences—transforming policy outcomes or improving firm performance—and as symbols of equality and progress. Moreover, the gendering of leadership empowers women, even when quotas are implemented for strategic rather than principled reasons. Skeptics allege that leaders support quotas for the purposes of selecting tokens, loyalists, or otherwise unqualified women; to gain an electoral advantage; or to satisfy an international governance or aid organization (Franceschet, Krook, and Piscopo Reference Franceschet, Krook and Piscopo2012). Quotas may also contain deliberately designed loopholes and frequently impose light or inconsequential penalties for noncompliance. Nonetheless, “quota women” have the opportunity to develop expertise, gain authority, and exert power.
In Morocco, “the symbolism of women's empowerment through quotas has clearly struck a nerve” (Sater Reference Sater, Franceschet, Krook and Piscopo2012, 84), with women's demands becoming more credible in policymaking circles. Likewise, persistent sex stereotypes notwithstanding, female directors appointed under corporate quotas in Norway accrue prominence, respect, and social capital (Storvik and Teigen Reference Storvik and Teigen2010). Finally, existing scholarship has demonstrated that women's incursion into myriad public bodies transforms the actual institutions, as formal rules and informal practices—ranging from meeting hours and locations to modes of deliberation—shift to accommodate women's presence.
State actions that broaden and deepen quotas are enabling female politicians, ministers, bureaucrats, and business leaders to access power throughout the world. State-led programs to guarantee equality have evolved in stages: from making gestures toward equality, to setting concerted targets for women's inclusion, to adopting statutes that “fast track” inclusion, beginning with politics and extending to business and society. Each stage typically corrects for the previous period's failure to achieve equality rapidly enough.
Also remarkable has been the diversification of the institutional targets of state action. The state has guaranteed women's access to myriad political, social, and economic spheres, leading to a widespread gendering of leadership, which, in turn, transforms women's agency, authority, and power in ways consequential for existing institutional practices. Such a dramatic extension of the state's role in redistributing power and reshaping politics and business “as usual” is an uncommon occurrence in democratic states and thus demands explanation by scholars of comparative politics.
CONCLUSION
Quotas now constitute a key feature in the public landscape of aspiring, emerging, and established democracies. Ensuring women's access to spaces beyond legislatures—to civic agencies, public bodies, and corporate boards—enhances their visibility, their authority, and their social and economic power. Scholars of comparative politics must account for an expanded state role in gendering leadership and redistributing political, economic, and social power. This transformation has implications not simply for women's well-being, but also for how a state active in promoting equality measures may seek additional institutional innovations designed to restructure the body politic. “Equality-promoting states” may impose other statutes or regulations designed to disrupt elite hierarchies, redistribute resources, revitalize economic performance, and end longstanding norms of exclusion.
